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Local Threads is a storytelling podcast documenting the voices of New England's creative community. Artists, organizers, and culture makers who shape spaces, movements, and shared experiences.
Welcome to this week's episode of Local Threads. I'm Molly, your host. And this week, I sat down with William Brooks. He is the owner and founder of Milforge, which is a maker space in Norwood, Massachusetts that has a lot to offer. If you've ever sat down and wondered, I wish I could learn this insert skill here, Milforge probably has it.
Molly:We talk about open hack nights, the origin of Milforge, and what you can expect as a member or even a visitor to Milforge. Let's get into it. Welcome.
William:Thank you.
Molly:Thank you for coming. When did you guys open?
William:We opened the August, so just about two months ago.
Molly:And you're hosting classes, you're hosting events, you're getting out in the community, getting the word out.
William:We are. This has been our busy season for outside events. So we've done Westwood Day, Dedham Day, the Providence Maker Faire, And we have an event coming up at Charlotte Stadium with Bring Back the Trades.
Molly:When is that?
William:That's coming up the October.
Molly:Bring Back Trades.
William:Bring Back the Trades. So an organization that focuses on bringing people back into getting trained for the trades and trying to bring more of an appreciation for the work that gets done. We're working with IFEXIT and the Right to Repair organization in Massachusetts to try to bring a little bit of an awareness of how the design and construction of appliances, electronics contributes to their sustainability, Being able to get in, replace parts, the difference between taking apart a Lenovo PC and an Apple MacBook was night and day.
Molly:Yeah, exactly. And I so the right to repair, that's something that's approved in The The US as well as Europe?
William:It's it's been state by state.
Molly:Okay.
William:Massachusetts has a decent law for right to repair, especially around automotive. But there's definitely progress to be made on consumer goods.
Molly:So as a hobbyist, though, you could do it, anything you want.
William:Up to a point, there's still challenges with copyright protections on software. And more and more electronics are even appliances are software driven, where twenty five, thirty years ago, you might be looking at all solid state components. You take it apart. You can replace a capacitor. You can swap out different elements of the device.
William:Now, a lot of the controls are typically on one electronic control board, and swapping that out often costs as much as the original device, sometimes more.
Molly:Yeah, which is planned obsolescence, right? It's really frustrating when you even think about growing up, everything lasted a really long time, and people in the home or a neighbor knew how to fix it. You didn't have to call someone. And I'm not saying that calling someone to repair something isn't also valuable, but like You didn't have to break the bank
William:and you had the option to call somebody into repair a lot of the time now Devices aren't worth having somebody look at it, because the repair is to replace the whole device or to replace that one control board that costs as much as the device. Is doesn't make
Molly:a cool segue, because you guys at Millforge have a PCB lab?
William:We do. We've got an electronics lab, and we have a printed circuit board printer that's been donated. We actually don't have it in the shop yet, but it's a machine that will take the design specification for a PCB, for a circuit board, And we'll lay out the conductive strips, the traces, and draw all the holes for the components, and get it all set up. So you can do custom printed circuit boards in house in a half an hour or an hour, instead of sending them out to somebody and having them made and wait for them to ship back.
Molly:That's really amazing.
William:Yeah. It's a lot of fun. It takes prototyping up to that next level. So if you're working with small projects and you just need a handful of components to make something work with something else, instead of soldering all the wires freehand or using a whole breadboard, which is kind of a waste of materials that it's big, you can make a custom circuit board and just drop it in so you're dealing with something that's more efficient for size, looks better. Yeah.
William:And if you're prototyping for something that's eventually going to go to manufacture, you've got a good sense of what's going to be in there.
Molly:Yeah. And for those that are listening, if you don't know what a PCB is, whenever you bust open a computer and you see that green board with all the soldering on it, that's what we're talking about. Or it might be orange.
William:Green, yellow, black. Do our constructive destruction workshop when we go to events. So we bring mostly obsolete, some just very broken electronics and appliances and tools and things, put them out and let participants take them apart. So we just put tools out and let people take them apart.
Molly:That's fun.
William:And it is. It's a lot of fun to watch, especially with the younger kids who really haven't really seen the inside of these things. A lot of a surprising number of them haven't really taken anything apart like this before. There's always the handful of people who pick up the screwdriver and just hit things with it. Need to back off a little bit and learn how to take it apart.
William:And then we usually end up with people who'll stay the whole time, four or five hours, just taking things apart.
Molly:Yeah. That's it's I mean, when you think about it, people buy electronics or or even hobby toy or Machines, I don't know the word I'm having a brain. It's Monday.
William:I've been there
Molly:so you have people Often can't afford multiple devices to just tear up on whim and maybe they don't even think about once it's done once you're done with it, you can't repair it They just take it to Best Buy or wherever to Recycle it quote unquote. Yep. So yeah that giving people the opportunity to deconstruct something is fun
William:It is and and there's a lot of beauty in components, too. People are often fascinated by things like heat sinks, the big chunks of metal usually with sort of blades along the back that are designed to take heat off of a component, like a CPU or a graphics chip. But the the design of them ends up being very elegant. Yeah, you can get these Convoluted waves of folded metal you can get these huge castings with star shapes in them things like that have a natural Elegance to them as you take them apart and there's some fantastic sculpture and art made from pieces of what would otherwise be discarded electronics
Molly:What do you guys do with all the pieces?
William:We have a couple things we do salvage some components for ourselves things like fans motors sometimes power supplies are very easy to reuse, they're usually pretty durable. But we also partner with a couple of organizations that are in the same complex where we are. So we've got junk vets and junk teens that are clean out experts, and they both do handling of metal and electronics recycling. So when we're done with it and things have taken apart as far as they can be and we've taken out the things that we're gonna reuse, they go back and the electronics go to an electronics recycler and the metals go to a scrap yard.
Molly:Yeah. Shout out to junk teens and junk vets Speaking of them. I know we talked about you guys are doing potentially some junkyard wars
William:We're hoping to this this fall possibly in the spring depending on timing the availability of all the components and used pieces of Metal and furniture and other other elements haven't decided exactly where we're going to go with it Yeah, the idea would be get some period of time to go through and pull out components and find things that you'd like, and then maybe a day or two to disassemble them, reassemble them, and build. It might be an art piece. It might be a functional, say, a robot or something like that. But just to have that transformation from junk to something reusable and the element of competition get everybody in there
Molly:Yeah, of course. Yeah, who doesn't want to see that and it just adds another layer of it does entertainment for everyone so at millforge you guys like I said you have the Software lab or what do you say
William:is it an electronics lab
Molly:Electronics lab edit that Molly Textile lab three d printing. Yes, I'm trying to remember all of it cnc machining yep Welding?
William:Yes.
Molly:Woodcutting? Woodworking.
William:Woodworking. Metalworking.
Molly:Metalworking. Yep. Am I missing anything?
William:That's it so far
Molly:and right now you do classes So if somebody well you teach everybody how to use everything before they are let loose in the wild on any of these
William:They do all the we call the standing power equipment the larger equipment members have to certify on before they can use it solo. So folks who are very familiar with it, sometimes that's just reading through the manuals and the guidelines and then demonstrating that they know how to use it safely. For folks who aren't using it every day or maybe even haven't ever used a power sander, or a planer, or a joiner, we have intro classes. They're free for members. They're not too long.
William:But it gives you a survey of all the main equipment in a given area. So woodworking, metalworking. We have an intro to three d printing that we've run a few times. And it gets you through all the basics so that you can get comfortable enough to get started on your own. And then we'll be adding more intermediate level and advanced level classes down the road.
Molly:Okay. And then as far as instructors, I know we had talked before and you were looking for some instructors and specialty type things. What are you are you still looking for folks?
William:Always. Know how to use most of the things in the shop. It's stuff that's been my hobby for decades. But I'm not an expert, and there's always somebody who knows it better. So I'm looking to learn just as much as to help members in the public learn as well.
William:So we're looking for instructors in woodworking, in metalworking, in sheet metal, in welding. We're actually talking with a couple of folks on the welding side. There's a very enthusiastic group that would like us to start doing some work with smithing, blacksmithing. So we're hoping to get something going probably in the way of a short outdoor course this winter, we'll get something in there. And three d printing, not just the printing itself, but using the software that you need to use to design.
William:So we start with something really basic, like Tinkercad. And then we would move to things like Onshape or SolidWorks or Fusion. And those would be the more intermediate level classes. But just the intro class, you'll get through from scratch designing something in three d, printing it, and then learning how to finish it if you wanted to.
Molly:That's really awesome. I know I really am interested especially like in the wintertime. I'm all over the place, but I do want to learn how to three d print. I have some woodworking things I have up here Mhmm. But I'm too scared I'm gonna cut my finger off.
Molly:So I haven't done anything. You're like, oh, you're a liability. Don't come. No, we've
William:got paperwork for that.
Molly:Yeah. But you offer people a membership, which is occurring membership, 20 fourseven access, but then you also offer day passes or weekend passes?
William:We do. We've got we've got a weekend only membership, which is a nice entry level, especially for folks who are working full time and this is just a hobby or small projects. And then we have a seven day membership for individuals and a family membership, which will cover usually up to three adults and all the children in the household. And with a parent, anybody over six can learn to use the equipment.
Molly:That's cool.
William:Yeah.
Molly:And those seven days, are they seven sequential days or just seven scans into the
William:It's seven days a week, twenty four hours a day.
Molly:No, I mean if you do a seven day membership.
William:Oh, no, it's a seven day a week membership. So it's $3.65 a year.
Molly:Sorry. Misunderstood.
William:And then we do have day passes. So if you've been through one of the training classes, you're certified to use the equipment, you can get a day pass as long as there's staff or someone else certified in the shop. Folks who have, say, a weekend membership and may want to come in on a Monday or Tuesday, we have a discounted day pass for folks who have a membership.
Molly:That's awesome. And you've been hosting events, like you just had a SolidWorks event
William:Yes.
Molly:Recently. Can you tell
William:So about we're fortunate enough to host the Boston SolidWorks user group. It's a very active community, a lot of very cool makers in there. There's this last meeting. We had a husband wife team that does a podcast and has it's called My Next Project. And everything that they do, they design in SolidWorks and then bring it all the way through.
William:Everything from basic three d design for a spare part for something to I think one of the projects they showcased was a combination, see if I get this right, a combination chicken coop, raised bed garden, and picnic area as a single structure. They designed the whole thing from scratch. So it's a lot of fun to meet with folks. SolidWorks is one of the more, I'd say, more advanced modeling tools that's out there. It's used in high-tech industry and aerospace.
William:And it's very, very versatile. So the things that folks design and the detail they design them with and then go ahead and Build these projects and it's a lot of fun to talk to
Molly:you'll definitely have to give me their info I'll link them in the show notes.
William:Yeah, definitely
Molly:Because that's something I would want to listen to and they probably have a YouTube I'm assuming watching people make stuff on YouTube Yep Obsessed with it.
William:It's a lot of fun, especially when you when you take a project that's been spread out over time and compress it a little bit So you can really feel the process and the progress along the way
Molly:and I I couldn't be bothered to replace hardwood floors in a home, but I could watch someone do it. And don't understand why because I just haven't I don't know. But there's something about that satisfaction of watching someone learn how to do something, which I'm sure you have a lot of satisfaction in that. And then watching them get confident in learning how to do it Yeah. Is a whole another layer.
William:I I think that's probably one of the most rewarding parts of of what I do is is helping people get over that first hurdle so that they get comfortable enough to think, oh, I could do this on a bandsaw, or oh, I could do this with a drill press and a break, and be able to have those tools so that their imagination isn't limited by what they
Molly:can do.
William:Yeah. And just come in and start to practice and do the work in the shop. It's a lot of fun to see.
Molly:How did you guys get involved in or even how did this idea come about?
William:About or twenty five years ago, the publishing company O'Reilly came out with a magazine called Make Magazine, and took a few different ideas around hobbyists in electronics and the very fledgling three d printing universe and prop making and costume making and construction, and put it all into one place, and came up with the idea of, or the term of, the maker movement, folks who go to what they can do, what they can build first, and then just build it. And the magazine is phenomenal. My partner calls it brain porn. It's just sit and flip through and see all the things that you could be doing, all the different projects and the technologies and the tools. And that got me thinking about making it in a different way.
William:I have a little bit of a technical theater background. I've done construction and other things along the way, but it flipped that switch. And so I've been noodling on the idea for a while. Maybe two, two and a half years ago, the industry that I'd been working in, the software side, and continues to look shaky. And the risks started to even out.
William:Do I stay in this industry that's kind of shaky and it's got a lot going on? Or do I take the leap and go into what I've been dreaming about for almost two decades at that point? And we talked about it, and I took the leap. So since then, we've been initially looking for property, looking for board members, bringing in equipment, getting all the things pulled together. And then for the last Maybe nine months or so Very much actively building out the space.
Molly:Yeah, it looks awesome.
William:Thank you.
Molly:I mean, it's such an inviting space and it's I'm sure it's exciting to onboard new members and just have these events like I said and connect a community That's one piece, but also just remove that barrier to let people freely try something. You never know. You might love welding. But if you don't get to try it ever, and like I don't even know if they have welding and wood shop in class and high school anymore.
William:Less and less, I think.
Molly:Yeah. I mean, I didn't take it, but I was never offered it anyway. And I ended up being a mechanic, so Jokes on you guys, I guess.
William:It drew you in even if you didn't have the exposure.
Molly:Yeah. And
William:I think also finding other people that are interested in it and have overlapping skills or complementary skills. I think it is rewarding for me to see new members come in and start using things. But even more fun and more rewarding is watching those members form groups and get to know each other and start to practice. We've got a little group that does a lot of work in three d printing, and there's somebody from that small group in there almost every day. And they're trying new things, and they're pushing the equipment, and we're having a lot of fun.
William:We've got a sort of a fledgling group in metalworking and welding, some with outside experience, some who are brand new and really enthusiastic, that are pushing us to do things like considering outdoor Forge events and things like that. But watching those folks come together and meet each other and talk about projects and get excited about it is a lot of fun.
Molly:Yeah, there's something to say about the collective excitement that word in general missing in society anyway. Like, when you think about it whenever you're in one of these spaces and everybody's, you know, jamming on ideas in the ruminator, quote unquote, like you have there. That is your I guess what I'm trying to say is when something goes viral on Instagram. Right? It's it's fleeting.
Molly:You know, people forget about it. But those moments in person that we had we used to have Mhmm. And we don't anymore.
William:They're less common.
Molly:And this is this is what the original feeling was. Right? Yeah. You're all together. You're all excited.
Molly:And I think that the way social media has, like, fabricated this fake excitement over something that will, you know, go away in a second. And
William:it's a non contact excitement. It's often a non productive excitement.
Molly:Yeah. It's just a dopamine addiction hit, you know?
William:And you get a lot of that from actually doing the work, too. We've got one member who took an intro to woodworking class and an intro to three d printing class, had never really done either hands on very much, and is bringing the two together and building storage boxes, collection boxes that have three d printed components in a wood case.
Molly:Oh, that's a great idea.
William:Pulling pieces together and talking to people who work in both and getting those ideas. That's I'll go back to the SolidWorks user group. The presentations themselves and watching the PowerPoint and and hearing people talk about projects was great. But the break in between, when everybody was hanging out and and having a snack and bouncing ideas off each other, they're not just watching somebody else do something or seeing a picture of a project They're talking about what their next project is going be and getting inspired to do it and finding somebody who can help them that little extra component and it's it's different It's not it. I think it's it's more rewarding.
William:It's more durable than
Molly:Yeah, and those memories will last forever
William:Yeah,
Molly:And whether or not you continue with whatever that was and you maybe pick up something else, but it'll at least give you a pathway to find out. You know, I tried resin three d printing and at home, and it's so messy.
William:It is.
Molly:Not my vibe. But filament three d printing, I could do that. But that's a huge investment.
William:It can be, especially if you're doing volume. Yeah. We've got a person I talked to the other day about possibly coming in who's been prototyping a product. I can't go into too much detail. No, sure.
William:But Secret. They've been prototyping a product, and the more options they have in the prototyping they have, the more three d printers they've built up in their dining room. Yeah. They're at the point now where they're out of space, and they want to expand and be able to prototype more and faster and start to develop it for actual manufacturing. It's the kind of space where
Molly:you can do that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting because I know well at least in my past life in the space industry like PCBs were obviously outsourced. Something you guys could do if there's like a little startup around here.
William:Yeah, absolutely.
Molly:They should look into makerspaces.
William:Absolutely. We have workbays that members can rent. They're six by eight, roughly, about 50 square feet, and then we have space to put in 100 square foot bays. And they're a perfect spot to set up so that you have space to come back to and storage for materials and specialized equipment that you may have. There's another makerspace out in Worcester called Technicopia.
William:And last time I was there, there were folks running entire small businesses out of workspaces about that same size. Yeah. Stamp making and guitar making and repair, and it's fantastic. Yeah.
Molly:That's really cool. And that's another thing, too, to have you being pretty connected with the other maker spaces around the area
William:I have tried to be it's it's a very supportive community. Yeah, we're Where we are in Massachusetts. There really isn't anything our size and scale for this would so we're not directly stepping on anybody's toes. I reached out and talked to folks at a handful of makerspaces. I spent a lot of time at Northeastern University, which has eight makerspaces on campus
Molly:Oh, wow.
William:That I know of. There might be more. Touring them and talking to the people that are there, and Technicopia has been great. Some of the folks, like Gooey Calacante, who founded Artisans Asylum, made a lot of the materials they used during the development of that facility, made them public and open source aspects of the contracts and liability agreements and how to find insurance for a business that's that complicated. He and the group that founded Artisans put all that material out there so that other people could start it.
William:It's been great to Talk with and and share resources with that community. Wow.
Molly:Yeah, let me know where the link is for that because You never know who's listening and maybe they're dreaming of doing the same thing.
William:Absolutely
Molly:I think more the more spaces we can go and do fun things with our hands instead of scrolling because I admit I have scoliosis, but I've also I try to be pretty tapped in, but there's a lot of things I don't want to be tapped into right now because I know they're Not great. Not that they're not great.
William:You sit down with your phone to relieve stress and often come out more stressed.
Molly:Yeah, and oftentimes you have to be like, okay Well, I need to go research this because I don't really know.
William:Yeah,
Molly:and there's a lot of that like virality of Making money off of Sensationalizing things even though there's a lot of bad stuff out there
William:It's good to stay up to date on what's going on around you but at the same time going someplace where it's the of the equipment and the thing that you're working on and the feel of wood under your hands and that It's very therapeutic. It's not trying to juice a response. It's just Yeah. It's natural response to the creativity and to doing something concrete. Making is an act of resistance.
Molly:It
William:is. It really is. It's a way to say, I'm capable of controlling and developing my own environment and the tools I use, the things I have in my space.
Molly:And being in community It doesn't matter if it's an activism thing or if it's making something or you know just Supporting other people making things it's so important and we've gotten to a point where nobody wants to leave the house Mhmm. I've gotten myself out of that, but it's so good. Everything's convenient, but it shouldn't, you know, maybe the things that are convenient aren't the best.
William:And I I think the in some ways that convenience deprives us of the pride of purpose the pride of ownership.
Molly:Yeah, it does.
William:I ordered this and it showed up on my door doesn't give you the same satisfaction as I thought of this and I drew it and I built it.
Molly:Yeah, exactly. Or I know there's a lot of folks out there that go to thrift stores or go to places that make things and they say, oh, I can make that. Well, do it then. Stop saying it and do it.
William:Absolutely. It's It was a little sad, I think, to watch What's happened to something like Etsy over the last yeah five or ten years as as the handcrafts faded and more of the mass produced small objects that look handmade, but
Molly:are stolen designs or
William:Absolutely. And there are alternatives out there that are collaborative and set up as co ops so that they're owned by the makers themselves. And I think they'll work a little bit better. But it's again, you're losing that that sense of of ownership and the prominence of of the item, even if you don't make it yourself to to buy or find or or be gifted something that was handmade with a purpose by somebody who was really thinking about how it was going to be used makes a big difference. I spent almost three decades in software, and a good power surge could wipe out pretty much everything I've made in my entire career.
William:Yeah. But building a cabinet or making a bookend or creating a case for some piece of art, those things are going to last, even if they're not perfect.
Molly:A lot better than the mass produced. Because, I mean, talk a lot about fashion on this podcast. Mhmm. But there's another thing fast furniture. It's a thing.
William:Mhmm.
Molly:And everybody's noticing and that's why the vintage resale market is so high on on furniture because it's actually wood. It's not whatever that is.
William:It really and it's designed in a way that it's usually repairable. Yeah. Because of, like, older furniture. You've got dovetail drawers and tug and groove fitted outer walls, and you've got actual fasteners with Phillips heads or flathead screws on them and not weird tools that are shipped in the box.
Molly:Everything's an Allen wrench
William:Yeah.
Molly:That you don't own.
William:It's so much It's work to fix them, but they can be fixed. And they can be fixed in a way that's satisfying. I talking with someone in the shop the other day about how furniture from large Swedish collaborative or large Swedish companies looks pretty good in the catalog, and you bring it home, and and you is the sense that you put it together, so you feel sort of pride, but it's it's actively falling apart as you're putting it together.
Molly:Yeah. I never feel pride to get us together. I'm like, I I feel rage, and also, I just wanna, like, Kool Aid man through the wall. Like, I hate it. Mhmm.
Molly:I hate it so much. Yeah. And then there's, like, 5,000 pieces. It's like, this is so unnecessary. I think the intention was always good whenever something like that comes out, but it's like, alright.
Molly:We've made everything a little too easy, a little too ridiculous, so we needed to dial it back.
William:And it's very prescribed. I mean, you have that couch, and you go to somebody else's house, and they have the same couch. It's a little There is a workshop that I would love to set up. We haven't put it on the calendar yet, but the idea of IKEA hacking, because all of their parts are standardized and distances and fasteners and things are pretty consistent throughout, even though what's on the shelf is very prescribed and very repetitive, for lack of a better word, you can repurpose and reuse and reconfigure a lot of those things to make other furnishings, to make sculpture, to make other types other types of of storage, and there's a very active community putting that together.
Molly:That's awesome. Yeah, because I know we talked about nerd forge before but they they do a lot of that not necessarily hacking but I but transforming a particular piece. And I won't say that they're all there's mostly, they find things, but
William:that
Molly:creativity is insane.
William:Where we are at behind Winsmith Mills over at Norwood Commerce, that whole Winsmith Mills section, there's a lot of vintage finds, furniture and books and clothing and things that are more or less as is, cleaned up, but this is what it was in the 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s. But there's also a lot of that repurposing, rebuilding, to take pieces that may not have a lot of collector value but are intrinsically solid, and taking that next step, building it into a more solid piece of furniture, making it into an artistic piece or a statement piece. And it's that same that same vibe that same taking what's in your environment and Making it better and making it a piece that you can own or where you you know the person who did it and can say where it came from
Molly:speaking of YouTube people like I see stuff that they make
William:Mhmm.
Molly:And I'm like, I wanna make that, but I don't own any of those pieces that I need to make it, and I don't wanna buy. And so you're just stuck in this, oh, man, I really wanna make that for my house. Like, they made a Hearthstone card. It's a card game. I don't know if you're aware of it on the Internet, but it's it was, like, four foot tall and it was, like, three d and it had, like, resin, like, gems on it and it's like and it was the base was wood and I'm like man, you know just
William:and It's not something that everyone has the tools to do at home But if you have access to them like that's what the makerspace does that's what millforge is there for we have on the outside of the building, we have stencils of tools and things that are either in the shop or reminiscent of things that we would use. But in the center of it, there's a robot who has some very cool fans. There's a family that walks by once in a while, their younger kid We'll sit and talk to the robot when they're on their walk by, which is fantastic. But we wanted the robot to be able to come with us. So we grabbed an image of it, made it into a vector image, an SVG, so that it could scale, and then popped it into our CADCAM program for the Maslow three d router, or CNC router.
William:This is a router, just an off the shelf router, mounted on a sled, a wood sled, that can slide over a piece of wood up to four feet by eight feet in size. So we scaled this guy up to about six feet tall.
Molly:That's awesome. I don't think I saw it last time.
William:We just did this the other day.
Molly:Oh,
William:that's we so cool. Had moved the CNC router, so we had to calibrate it. And this is the first thing we've cut since then. But now we've got a six foot high version of the robot from the outside of the building.
Molly:That's so cool. Yeah. Dream project is making Johnny number five. That's a lot of pieces.
William:It is.
Molly:They're all metal. But I guess you could probably do them in three d print and just paint them. Yep. Paint it chrome.
William:And the filaments that are available are are just amazing now. There's hundreds of different kinds. There are metal filled filaments that can be polished pretty much like metal. There are ceramic filaments. There's some very, very strong materials, ABS, for example.
William:It's the same thing that Legos are made from. And so you can build connectors and parts. There's a ton of connectors to connect existing hardware together. So there's standard it's called T track. It's extruded aluminum that's used for robots and shelving and microphone racks and things like that.
William:But there are connectors that will connect that to LEGO or connect Mechanosets to Tinkertoys. So you can take existing hardware and add all these connectors. So I'm sure it might not be a perfect replica, but you could walk next door
Molly:Yeah.
William:Poke through scrap Yeah. Metal and come out with enough pieces to build a very visually effective Johnny Five.
Molly:And I want him to talk.
William:Oh, absolutely. Because he has to. Yeah. And we see that too, there's and this is something that Make Magazine does a lot of, but adding automation to sculpture or adding automation to projects with these small system on a chip type boards like the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, It's a little bit intimidating to somebody who hasn't seen electronics before. But once you get the hang of it, it's really very simple to add blinking eyes or speech synthesis or motors to drive something.
William:And we had a camp full of mostly middle school kids putting together robotics kits and then programming them to move and grab things and in a week.
Molly:That's awesome.
William:So it's it's Intimidating though. It might be on the outside. It's it's really a lot easier to pick up than you one
Molly:thing I'm lucky my husband knows how to use those Raspberry Pi things. I'm like excellent I for whatever reason. I'm like Just let me do the welding and stuff you do
William:you put that in Yeah. And it's it's fun to collaborate and stuff like that where you might have an expertise in one area. Yeah. Yeah.
Molly:I I all of the memberships come with a subscription to that magazine.
William:They do. Yep. Yep. The annual memberships or annually paid memberships come with the print version, so you actually get the magazine, and it's a small form factor with a square binding. It's designed very intentionally to feel different from other magazines, so it's nice to have.
William:And then all the other memberships come with the digital version. Everybody So Is gets
Molly:there any cool projects going on that some of your makers are making right now that you're excited about seeing them finish?
William:There are a couple. You'd mentioned resin printing. We just added a resin printer to our stable of printers. And we've got a couple of folks who are
Molly:I like that you said stable. Yeah.
William:Yeah. They're all lined up. It looks like a barn. And so we're getting that set up and configured. And just having that additional type of printer there, it gives you much finer resolution.
William:The material is very durable, so it's good for parts that get a lot of handling or mechanical stress. So just getting that up and running has been fun. We have a member who's a lapidary artist, works with stone. So cutting and polishing gemstones and all the equipment for that. And she's been working, if I remember correctly, on the balcony of her apartment for a while.
William:But fall's coming, it's getting So she'll be moving all that in. So she's going to bring in all of her equipment and have the full laboratory lab set up in one of the workbays. It's going be cool just to have that in there and see her doing the work.
Molly:Yeah, it's really awesome. Do you have any open workbays or
William:We do have some. Yep.
Molly:So the workbases work as a like basically an office that you rent essentially, but it's all Workbench type thing.
William:It's when you walk into it or move into it. It's it's just a box of plywood space But when you rent it, it's yours to customize so you can put in shelving and racking and workbenches. They all have power. They all have access to pneumatic for ear tools. And they're in the center of the action.
William:That's one of the things that I picked up talking with folks who ran other makerspaces, putting those workbays and the spaces where more members will be working on projects central to the space. So it's what you see when you come in, and you can get inspired. And then visually, you have access to the whole shop. So trying to figure out how to solve a problem, if you're in your basement at home, you might look up and see the cobwebs and the Here, sewer look up and see all the tools that you have available to you, and other people working on projects, and get that next step.
Molly:Now it's twenty four seven. Are there just folks that come in the middle of the night and just work?
William:A bit. Yeah. I I and the three d printing especially, the crews in there almost every night. Yep. There's staff there, regular office hours, so we're there Tuesday through Saturday, usually like nine to five, nine to 05:30, so that there's someone there to take new members and train and certify members if they need to be.
William:But members have access They have a like a key card a key fob and they can get in whenever they need to and that that three d printing crew is pretty Pretty enthusiastic
Molly:yeah, and it takes a long time to print something so you probably don't recommend people leaving their prints Unattended or do you
William:we try to have an environment where that's okay? If you if you're comfortable taking pieces off to move it up You can take it off lay it out next to it set a note if you don't want to touch certainly at a note, but It's a collaborative group, and it's a and we're trying to create an environment create a community that's supportive and trusting and and able to to leave projects share equipment and and feel comfortable doing that
Molly:Yeah, that's important because we've gotten to this point where we're very individualized and very siloed. Yeah. And that's just not fun. It's really not.
William:It's not. It puts a damper on on the creative process.
Molly:It really does. Being around creative people, whether they're making something with more difficult complex machines or just painting, which is complex in itself. Can't do that either. It's just fun. It's refreshing.
Molly:And even a conversation that you have with someone unrelated can flesh out something in your mind you're not even expecting.
William:Absolutely. It's that that little spark, that synergy that you pick up when you're in the community, actively talking with folks who are even if they're not doing the same thing, just a different perspective of their expertise.
Molly:So your whole family, are they makers?
William:They are. And the kids especially are very proud of it. Yeah. Younger children, actually all three of them, will happily tell people that they grew up working with jigsaws and bandsaws and drill presses and stuff. I've had a small workshop in the basement for as long as I can remember, back to when I was a kid.
William:So they're all very involved. Our youngest has been doing a lot of three d printing and finishing, so printing props and masks and things like that, and then filling and sanding them to smooth them out and painting them, customizing them. And our middle one is much more into woodworking, has been doing a lot of building and a lot of carving. Very into Swords and scimitars and also dishes and boxes
Molly:So they would probably want to do the forging outside
William:I think either one of them would be very interested in that. Yeah,
Molly:I am for sure
William:I've been talking with some of our welding crew about what things that we'd like to do. Yeah. And definitely, I mean, had planned on having welding in place and metalwork. Forge, we were thinking was going to be a little further down the line. It's just a little more complexity, a little more risk that we have to work on with fire department and insurance and all that stuff.
Molly:Yeah. Your insurance company is like, oh, no. Good lord. Not him calling me
William:But we'll but there are enough people interested in it that we're really We're talking about setting up a forge for blacksmithing so that the members who are interested or who have done it before can do that, getting some basic classes going. But also casting, which is just it's a lot of fun to watch and
Molly:Yeah. Do. It's really fascinating. And even I've seen it in all different kinds of scales. It's still magic to me.
William:It really is. And it gives you the flexibility of materials that you can sculpt and form by hand very easily, and then turn them into something that's much more durable with the metal casting, even if it's simple like jewelry castings for gold and silver
Molly:Mhmm.
William:Butters, things like that. Or all the way up to iron casting, iron pores. One of the folks that we're working with on some welding classes used to used to do some work with the Steelyard in Providence, which did an annual pour, a big iron pour. Hoping to replicate some of that. Probably not a full blown event like what they did with their iron pour, but we've just started working with a three d filament that's made from machinable wax so you can print and finish an object, so design it in a three d tool, print it out, smooth it, finish it, and then set it in ceramic or plaster, and cast it in metal.
William:So we're working on that bridge between the three d printing world and the metalworking world with them. I'm really interested. I'm hopeful we can get something going for this winter.
Molly:That would be really awesome. Now, do you have any open houses coming up?
William:We do. We will have our mostly monthly open hack night. It'll be in the November. Check our event calendar for that. And our event calendar has a subscription format, you can actually put it on your calendar and see what's coming up so that it makes sure that you leave room.
Molly:I can't stress how important that is because You never know when Instagram's not gonna work. Yeah, and so for me. I've what I've and I had a guest on Last week They also have a newsletter for and you can add to your calendar because it's all event based. Mhmm. And I was thinking about that today.
Molly:I'm like, you know, how I think people need to understand how important that is to maintain your audience base yourself. Mhmm. And how important it is as a person supporting these businesses, these creators, whoever, artists, to make sure that you can maintain that communication outside of these platforms, that Everything's a little shaky anyway.
William:We're just we're bombarded with updates and information and things that it's it is important to break through that a little bit with with keeping that community alive.
Molly:Yeah, and start using your calendar. I hate it. I hate it. I get it. But use your calendar.
William:Exactly.
Molly:Take other people's calendar, put it on your calendar, then you always know what's going on. Yep. And you if they go away or if we're all just saying, you know what, we're done with all of this, you can stay in contact.
William:Yep. I mean, to to to geek out a little bit on it, those of us who are of an age relative to the the Internet still like RSS, the Yeah. Really simple syndication, as a way to keep track of things. Because even podcasts are available on RSS. You can just set up a feed reader of some sort and solicit just the pieces that you want, pull them into your custom subscription.
William:But it's a nice compliment, even as Instagram and TikTok and all of the various Fediverse platforms, the Mastodons and all those, because they've all been changed and new companies come in, there's it's still a nice way to communicate with folks. Yeah, I'm a little bit of an early Internet nerd, but that's my thing.
Molly:But I honestly think that we're gonna get to a point where we're like, okay, the Internet has used us. Now we need to get back into using the Internet. Yep. Because we have gotten to a point where the Internet is using us, whether it's to make money for, I don't know, various media company, whatever. It's an exploitation tool, and now we need to flip it around to be an actual tool that wasn't intended to be useful, I think.
William:Yeah.
Molly:I mean, nothing ever starts out to being this evil empire. Right? No. It just gets there.
William:And it's it's often the easy path.
Molly:Yeah. Which
William:if you're a devotee of Star Wars, that's the same. That's the message. That's the easy path. That's not always good. But a lot of those things we were talking about Arduino and Raspberry Pi and stuff.
William:A lot of those things are the same basic technologies that make your refrigerator listen to you and the stuff that we don't necessarily want. Yeah. But if you own them and you do the programming and you know what's in there and what it's connected to, you can Get a lot of the same benefits or benefits that nobody had thought of before without all of the other
Molly:is my
William:refrigerator I don't think this refrigerator is listening to us.
Molly:I need to know how to disable that Let me know when you have a refrigerator hack night
William:Might not be a bad idea.
Molly:Honestly.
William:How to silence your kids' toys and turn off the Internet and all of your appliances. Yeah. That was the first thing we did when we put our microwave in, was turn off the Internet.
Molly:It had Internet? It did.
William:But a lot of that same technology, like, it's not very expensive, obviously. They're putting it in everything.
Molly:And you
William:can use it to water your plants or open your blinds when it's sunny.
Molly:Oh, the IoT. Yeah. Internet of Things. That's how I learned about Raspberry Pi. I was I was leaving in Austin, and there was this IOT group that got together.
Molly:I was like, well, let me join that. Mhmm. If there's a group, I've probably joined it at one point, and I've always got some kind of weird story. It's comic like at at this point. But that's how I we all bought Raspberry Pis and we were working on how to make this is before Ring doorbell actually because we all were gonna make one where it would take a photograph Anytime there was like a movement egg or door
William:Yeah, and there's this there are a lot of really good uses for that stuff. It's fun I mean the devices that let you play with your with your cat when you're at the office Yeah. Throw a treat out and bounce the toy around. They're a lot of fun, as long as they're not listening to you. Yeah.
William:So there's a lot you can do. And going back to the idea of reuse, there are a lot of things that have really pretty powerful compute in them that we don't even think about. A lot of the disposable vape pens have a full blown computer in them. They've got a they've got a system on a chip. And there's there's a guy who's actually who runs a website off of a spent vape pen.
William:That's And you can take them apart, you can pull it out, and you can program it. You can use it to control things. But all of that compute is in a device that people
Molly:Thorough
William:use for a weekend pitch.
Molly:Yeah. Yep. I suppose if you can recharge it, then it's probably pretty powerful. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Molly:General.
William:Yeah. There's a lot like that. Yeah.
Molly:I hate
William:I hate to waste things, and and it's nice to have a a community that's thinking along those same lines.
Molly:Yeah. You've got me really thinking about making a sculpture of a Johnny number five versus making a whole, like, Robotic
William:yeah It's a word between yeah,
Molly:just I just need him to say things and blink That's it. Maybe wave his arm. I guess his arms need
William:to be functional. Yeah, yeah
Molly:everything else Dang, now I need to make
William:that'd be fun I'm working on a piece. That's just that's mostly circuit boards and conduit and wires That's a a walnut at peace that just the the beauty of the the layouts themselves the the way components are laid out and the way that they look in the light, and the layers that they evoke, the different types of electronics Mhmm. Provide that almost like a cityscape the Yeah. Dimensionality. And layering that together, it's unintentional art being brought into being intentional art.
Molly:Yeah, because you think about all of the iPhone or not iPhone, but all of Chargers right they're not they're obsolete everything's going to USB C so there's all of those components you could use to solder into like a work of art. Oh, I'm excited.
William:Yeah. Yeah, it's
Molly:I have so many cords. It's stupid. We have We have like this whole electronic bin in our house.
William:Think everybody has that bin of all the parts that you don't need.
Molly:Yeah. But you don't want get rid of them because you'll use them or you haven't quite found a use for them yet or if you don't have a bin, start a bin, because you never know. Definitely.
William:When we're doing the constructive destruction, it's fascinating to watch kids, when they take apart old computers and open up the hard drives, the platter in a hard drive, and most of the ones that we get have a single platter, it's this highly polished, very heavy silver disc. And when they get it open, there's always a pause, and they're looking at it. Yeah. Weighing it in their hand, because it's just got that presence. There are a lot of ways to reuse those.
William:Plus, the magnets inside hard drives are incredibly powerful. They're just great to have around to stick stuff to the wall.
Molly:Oh, yeah. True.
William:But everything everything has that that side to it that it can be both utilitarian, it can serve its purpose, and and it can have that that elegance.
Molly:Yeah. Yeah. When I did go to the open house you guys had in August, feels like it was just yesterday.
William:It does. We don't almost 200 people.
Molly:That's awesome. I'm glad because it's something people are craving this kind of environment.
William:I think so.
Molly:I'm speaking for myself. I need something to go do. Yeah, I need to get out of my house and Even if I had a lot like I have my sewing room and everything at home But even that just being able to do that with other people. It's just great
William:It's yeah having having other folks who are interested in it or who aren't doing it themselves But are interested in what you're doing is really fun and and the physical space I mean for sewing We have a cutting table. That's big enough to roll out a full bolt of cloth. Yeah, it's hard to do that at home Yeah, you're on your dining room table or you've cleared the living room floor I've done both and to have a purpose built place for that
Molly:Yeah, so if no one's ever cut a pattern now on the floor consider yourself lucky. Yep. But also, if now you know of a place that has a full space for that Yeah. Because that is rough on your body.
William:Oh, it is. Especially as we get older. Yeah. But laying out cardboard on the floor, so you have something to pin it to, so you're pinning your fabric down to cardboard that's shifting as you're trying to move it around.
Molly:And then the cat comes, if you're always like at my house or the dog.
William:Yep as their their shine to the Yeah, definitely Yeah, but it is it's it's freeing
Molly:Yeah, I Think we've been talking for about an hour. Is there anything else that you want to cover or want people to know?
William:We are we're always adding classes, and we're looking for both folks to sign up for those, but also for instructors. There's a little note on our class and event calendar. If you've got a particular passion that you want to share with other folks, if it's artistic or mechanical or construction based, anything that works with the equipment that we have available or where we can provide that equipment and provide space, bring it to us, pitch it. We've got a couple of folks who are in custom prop design that have pitched classes that we're gonna try to get on the calendar.
Molly:We're working
William:on welding I was hoping to get it in time for Halloween. We may not be close enough But we will definitely be doing both custom design and and prop replication prop design.
Molly:That's gonna be exciting.
William:Yeah.
Molly:I mean all of it's exciting I have a fixation I think on props. Yeah. Absolutely. So expensive.
William:Oh, just looking at auction sites and seeing what's out there. Yeah, and and you can do some some really good reproduction work just with three d printer, Bondo, and some some good painting techniques. It's it's definitely a lot of fun.
Molly:One thing I did want to bring up, and I forgot, you had mentioned before when we talked that if there's a piece of equipment that you don't have and the community wants it, then you guys will try to figure out how to
William:Yeah, we deliberately get it started with just the basics, because that would get us off the ground and rolling and let people get their hands on things. But I know that there are places where we're going to need to expand, we're letting the membership pull us there. Yeah. So the resin printer that we added for the three d printing, that was our three d printing folks were really eager to get one to have that different type of production. On the woodworking side, there are a few things drum sander, especially for working on very large flat surfaces.
William:There are a few others that we've been looking at. And the idea will be that it's almost like a Kickstarter. We'll have the ability for members to pledge towards equipment that we might not otherwise be able to get, and we get to a certain percentage or cost, then we'll go ahead and pick it up, and the members can contribute, and we'll contribute the rest so that we can grow the workshop that way.
Molly:And I think people need to also realize the cost of some of these machines, because you know when whenever like the You say Kickstarter crowdfunded type of thing a bit I don't know how much your cnc machine was, but I'm sure it wasn't cheap
William:They're not cheap. The laser cutter was several thousand dollars, plus it was shipped overseas. A lot of the equipment we buy at industrial auctions.
Molly:Oh, that's a good idea.
William:Yeah. It may be a little bit older, but a lot of that older equipment is really well built. So our jointer, for example, I think is older than me. But it's a really heavy metal casting, really well built, and it doesn't take much to tune it up. And the more expert members will contribute towards that, too.
William:The joiner was pretty well trued up, we had a member who said, I can do it better. He came in and actually did. He got it cleaned up and calibrated even better than we had. And so even though that equipment's on the older side, with a little bit of work, we can keep it up and going. So a lot of these pieces are pricey.
William:They're big. But and the maintenance isn't always cheap
Molly:No, and it has to be done regularly to keep things safe and reliable and keep that insurance going.
William:Yes, exactly exactly
Molly:Well, thanks again so much for taking the time to talk with me. I'm I'm excited for everything you guys are doing.
William:Thanks, Molly. You too.
Molly:I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Check the show notes as usual where to find Milforge and how to become a member. It's important more now than ever to get out into your local community and talk to people, collaborate with people, be inspired by what they're doing, and also just connect. So I hope you enjoyed this, and I will see you next time. Maybe I'll see you at Meldforge.
Molly:Bye.